1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to network management and more specifically to a framework for developing a network management services. The present invention is more particularly related to a framework for developing extensible network management services.
2. Discussion of Background
Networks have become important, strategic foundations for competing in a global economy. And every day, more users and more business activities step into the network realm. Users are demanding that access to the network be delivered with the same simplicity, reliability, quality, and flexibility associated with picking up a phone and calling anywhere in the world.
In this network-centric environment, the behind-the-scenes designers and operators of networks face three concurrent challenges:
Networks are growing larger and more dispersed. With each new user comes another PC, many of them notebooks and a growing number are scattered to remote locations, users' home offices, or all corners of the earth in the hands of mobile workers. While the initial capital cost of PCs gets a lot of attention, the greatest chunk of technology budgets goes to maintaining and managing users' connections. Lowering total cost of ownership (TCO) for a growing PC population means finding a way to simplify and automate management and troubleshooting of desktops, servers, and mobile PCs spread across the business. It also means enhancing the fault tolerance of servers so IS staffs escape the need to constantly fine-tune performance or deal with emergencies.
Networks are growing more complex. New technologies and applications are reaching into corporate networks at an accelerating pace. More users and greedier applications are competing for bandwidth. Fully switched local networks are common. Consequently, it is growing more difficult to monitor performance and pinpoint problems. The terminal-to-host model is long gone, and even the relatively predictable shape and behavior of client-server environments has given way to the more fluid and “fractal” connections that support intranets, Internet connectivity, multimedia, and other emerging applications. It is essential to gain increased visibility into today's complex networks.
Networks are growing more critical. Businesses are using information technology as a competitive advantage. And those that are getting the strongest return on their investment are graduating from e-mail and office applications to business-critical, production applications-process controls, customer service, medical imaging, e-commerce and others. In these situations, near-100-percent network availability is essential the days of overnight outages lasting up to several hours are over.
Along with this need for nonstop networks comes a need for greater control over, and information about, how traffic moves through the network. Companies are deploying applications such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), sales automation, e-commerce, distributed training, and voice-over-IP (VoIP) at a rapid pace. This business-critical and, in the case of voice and video, delay-sensitive traffic needs to move through the network unobstructed by lower-priority activities such as e-mail or Internet browsing.
Therefore, IS managers need tools capable of providing network support for these critical business objectives on an immediate real time basis. The supporting information is preferably provided in an intuitive format that allows the managers to quickly find the needed information with simple searching and a minimum of additional research. However, because of display complexities, and lack of available tools, the data presented to IS managers is not presented as effectively as is preferred to allow quick and easy access to the data needed for making proper network management decisions. Furthermore, many of the network devices and deployed applications are newly developed, and may use new or advanced protocols, methods, and types of data. However, network management devices are typically set-up to use a specific communication technique or, protocol suite, leaving little or any variation for improved methods. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,058,314 provides a network management device that is set up for a known application or protocol and gather data in a specific format for that application/protocol. Unless specifically developed for a particular application, protocol, method, or data type, existing management programs are either inefficient, unprepared, or unable to properly manage the new devices and/or applications.